A Night to (Not) Remember

“In my opinion, the world woke up today, and realized we are in fact living in a crisis, one which it is unclear if we can fix in our current state.”

Uzo Watanabe, just now

Tokyo

Agent Shimano had been using his second sight magic to keep track of Kenta's location since placing the tracking bug on him back in Sapporo. But now, all of a sudden, he was unable to track the boy. This worried Shimano very much.

“Sir? We have a problem…”

“What is it now, Shimano?” Agent Suzuki snapped.

“The boy is gone,” Shimano answered.

“What do you mean the boy is gone?”

“I was tracking him closely,” Shimano explained, “but then it was like he had disappeared completely off the face of the Earth.”

Suzuki's face froze into a look of absolute dread. His intuition had told him there was something that had gone horribly wrong.

“Didn't you say he and the girl were on the Tōhoku express line?” Suzuki asked.

“Yes. They were taking the shinkansen to Tokyo.”

“Turn on the TV…”

“Yes, sir.”

By the time Shimano turned on the TV, news reporters from the JTV network and first responders were already swarming the scene of a complete disaster of a train wreck.

“... hole inexplicably opened up just twelve kilometers north of Sendai, causing a bizarre decoupling of the Hayabusa 100 express train,” a female reporter told her audience. “Only two of the train cars remain on the surface, their occupants awaiting rescue by Tōhoku Rescue. The remaining eight cars have fallen into the sinkhole, which first responders estimate to be fifty meters deep. A sticky oil-like substance is quickly filling the sinkhole, ensuring the chances of survival are slim.”

Shimano had heard enough. After shutting off the TV, he asked Suzuki, “What should we do?”

Suzuki answered, that grim look still frozen on his face, “Tell the chief there's been an incident involving the catgirl. Send agents to the scene to check for survivors. If she asks why, tell her we can't keep playing it safe around the girl.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If the boy is dead, then the girl might be as well,” Suzuki continued. “But we cannot afford to take that chance.”

•

Near Sendai, Miyagi

Kenta woke up to find himself almost completely covered in black sludge. No light could be found inside or outside the train. The car itself had turned onto its side in the fall.

“Flashlight Luminize,” Kenta said to himself. Not sure of what this sickly goo even was, Kenta took measures to keep the light on his finger away from it. Can't risk having any more accidents, Kenta thought. The light revealed a train car full of sludge and varying degrees of mangled bodies.

“Hello?” Kenta shouted into the void. “Is anyone alright? Is anyone alive here?”

Only one of the bodies groaned as it struggled to move. An older woman thought to use a belt as a makeshift way to keep herself secured to her seat. It worked well enough. She had not suffered any major injuries in the fall.

Kenta fought through the sludge to tend to the woman. “Hey! Can you hear me? Are you alright?”

The woman said nothing in response. She was breathing at a steady rate, though, so she seemed fine at the moment.

“Don't move,” Kenta told the woman. “I'm gonna see if anyone else is alive.”

Almost as if in direct response, the screams of terrified passengers rattled the air. Kenta had seven more train cars to search through. If this one was already half-full of sludge, Kenta could only wonder how bad the other train cars were.

As he made it to the door separating his car from the one in front of him, he cast another “Boundary Release”. Even with magic, Kenta struggled to get the door open. Part of that may have been because he was so used to the doors opening sideways that he hadn't thought the door may have needed to open upwards now.

Instead of immediately entering the next train car, Kenta decided to climb up to its exposed side. Once on what was now the top of the train, Kenta had a better vantage point from which he could survey the damage. In total, only half of the train cars: the one he just left, the one he was sitting on, and two more in front of it, were visible. The last one barely poked out of the muck.

Crawling further, Kenta found six passengers struggling to climb out of the train.

“Boundary Release!” Kenta shouted, opening the doors and allowing him to reach inside. “Give me your hand! Come on!” Kenta wasted no time in getting everyone outside. For only being fourteen, he showed considerable strength in helping the people out of danger.

Onto the next train car, Kenta found thirteen more people struggling in the sludge. Repeating the same process as before, he had very little trouble rescuing people from the train. And finally, the last train car he could reach. There, he could only find two swimmers. That car had already dipped so low into the sludge that once Kenta opened the doors, they were able to just climb out of the train themselves.

In all, twenty-three people were still alive, including Kenta himself. Once he had gathered everyone onto the last train car, he asked them, “Okay. Can any of you fly? Anyone at all?”

The other passengers muttered and whispered amongst themselves until finally, a man, a short but strong bodybuilder, emerged from the group.

“I can fly,” the bodybuilder said.

“Good,” Kenta replied. “Okay, good. That's our play, then.” He then asked the bodybuilder, “How high can you fly, give or take?”

“About a hundred meters,” the bodybuilder answered. “I’d been working hard through the summer and fall to improve my ceiling. Why do you ask?”

“I reckon we're about… sixty meters down,” Kenta answered. “I assume even with having to carry someone, that shouldn't hurt your ceiling too much.”

“Are you kidding?” the bodybuilder asked back. “Carrying workout buddies around was part of my routine!”

“Well, that works for me!” Kenta replied. “Sounds like we got a plan.”

“Oi!” Another man shouted at Kenta from deep within the group. “Who died and put a kid like you in charge?”

“I don't see anyone else coming up with solutions over here,” Kenta answered. “It might not be much, but we have to try. Now, who's with me?”

One by one, the other survivors replied with various affirmative answers: “Let's do it!” “Okay!” “Very well…” “Yes.”

Even the man who just scolded Kenta for being a kid answered, “If you insist…”